


If You Look for the Light

by beyondthesea



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/F, Post-Canon, well it's before Korra I guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-08
Updated: 2014-08-08
Packaged: 2018-02-12 06:49:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2099667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beyondthesea/pseuds/beyondthesea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The only people who think love makes us weak are the people who have never experienced it." </p><p>Azula still struggles, but Zuko thinks she at least might be happier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You Look for the Light

When Azula first tells Zuko of her relationship with Ty Lee, he is not altogether surprised. He's known for ages, actually. But Azula is some sort of awkward mix between nervous and defiant as she is trying to spit the words out and he actually thinks he sees some color rise to her face, so he acts surprised, nonetheless.

Azula had turned up on the outskirts of the Fire Nation two years after running into Forgetful Valley in the midst of a psychotic break. She was seventeen by that time, but Zuko can't remember her ever looking so small. Luckily, she'd been recognized by a farmer who, despite making it clear that he wasn't a fan of her or their late father (prison had not treated him well, and he'd passed on a year prior), hadn't been a vicious man. Instead of exacting his own justice, as Zuko knew many would not have hesitated to do when confronted with the erstwhile commander, he'd settled her into his grown daughter's old bedroom for the night, until Zuko could come to retrieve her.

"She didn't seem well. We couldn't just send her away," He'd explained from a low bow after Zuko had thanked him. "Consider it a service to you, Your Highness. For the first time in my life—in my father's life—there is someone sane on the throne." His words had cut closer to home than they should have. Ozai's unhealthy obsession with world domination had always been the worst kept secret in the Fire Nation—he hadn't exactly been secretive about his plans—but Azula's mental illness was another matter entirely. Her presence in the asylum had been kept on a need-to-know basis among only the highest ranked and most discrete staff. Zuko had made sure of it.

Zuko had thanked him again and allowed himself to be steered up a rickety, narrow staircase and into a small bedroom. The only pieces of furniture to speak of had been a wooden chair and a small bed. The mattress was stained in a number of places, and he could see hay poking out, but Azula was curled up on it nonetheless, a handmade quilt draped over her. She'd jerked awake when he touched her shoulder, her eyes growing wide like she wasn't sure if he was really there. They'd stared at each other for a few seconds, and relief had welled in the pit of Zuko's stomach, because she hadn't yet tried to burn him, and she didn't seem to be making any move to do so.

Finally, he'd tightened his hand on her arm, and sighed. "Azula, it's time to go home."

She'd been different, quieter, on the way back to the palace, and, more than once, Zuko caught himself wondering what had happened over the past two years. She'd been crazy the last time he'd seen her, when they were hunting down Ursa, but she'd been strangely herself: arrogant, manipulative, and cold. This girl was sullen and pensive. She'd stared out the window of the carriage almost the entire way back, taking in a landscape that he was sure she recognized.

"I didn't think you'd come for me." Her voice was a whisper, and if Zuko had been any farther away, he might not have heard it at all.

"Of course I did. You're my sister." The words had tasted familiar on his tongue, even after years of not knowing if he still had a sister at all.

"Not worried this is all a ploy to steal back your throne?"

 _Your_ throne, he'd realized, not _my_ throne. "Is it?"

She'd laughed, a mere echo of the cold, cruel laugh she'd perfected in her preteens. "Would I tell you if it was?"

"I don't think you'd have brought it up if it was." He'd shrugged.

Over the next few days, her activities over the past two years had surfaced. "Everything cleared up the next morning," Azula had told him. "I think it was the next morning. It was morning, anyway." Her voice had been weary, and he'd been unable to believe she was telling him this, volunteering any information at all. She'd come across a road and followed it until she'd been picked up by three men, ex-soldiers, it seemed, who presumably hadn't recognized her. "They knew I was valuable, but they didn't know why," she'd informed him. "They thought I was just some pretty young girl who was sure to turn a fortune in Omashu. I tried to burn them, but…" she'd turned her head in shame then, and Zuko had known what she was about to say. It had happened to him first, after all. "I could barely produce a flame."

So she'd wound up in Omashu, and they _had_ recognized her there. "I was nearly lynched," she'd told him, her nose wrinkled in disgust. "I should thank them though, because without them leaping over stands and climbing all over the wagon to get to me, I don't know how I would have escaped."

She'd made it out of Omashu and then she'd spent a lot of time in the forest. "I was having all these _dreams_ ," she'd told him. "And I was never sure if they were dreams or hallucinations, or if they were _real_." She'd shuttered visibly, but when he'd asked her if she was okay, she shot him a dirty look that had reminded him spectacularly of the girl he'd grown up with. "I spent a lot of time in all these little Earth Kingdom towns," she'd continued. "They were filthy and impoverished, but the people there were happier than anyone I've ever seen here. All any of those idiots would talk about was how the Fire Nation troops were gone. I decided not to try and take your throne again the morning after I left." She'd fixed him with a stare so penetrating he'd wondered if she'd somehow picked up the ability to read minds. "But that was the first time I considered that you might actually be right." She'd dropped her eyes, shrugged.

She hadn't known what to do with herself after that revelation. "I wasn't ready to face the Fire Nation again, especially without my bending," so she'd made a home in the Earth Kingdom, in one of those sad little villages. "They wouldn't hire me as a guard, even in one of the non-bending units, because I was a girl and I was only fifteen, and I wasn't going to tell them I was a fire bending prodigy who penetrated Ba Sing Se in less than a day, so I started hunting and selling my meat. That was when I realized that… killing wasn't fun anymore. I had to use tools and it was completely degrading. I thought it would be a hobby when I first had the idea, but it turned out to be a job. Nothing more."

The town had welcomed her. They'd had no idea who she was, of course. "There would have been riots in the streets." Another hollow laugh that was a weak imitation of the Azula whom Zuko had feared. "They just thought I was that orphan girl who lived in the woods and was a little bit crazy." It had been very humbling. "But they bought my meat." She'd stayed for a year, and then some travelling street performers had come through town—fire eaters—and she had known there was a good chance that _they_ would recognize her. She'd been pretty sure at the time that there was a reward on her head from some wealthy Earth Kingdom citizen, or maybe even the Earth King himself. "I knew I was never going to be able to stay in one place, so I got a job on a passenger ship. We had to wear a lot of makeup, so I didn't think anyone would recognize me, but we didn't wear it in the crew quarters, and there were so many fire benders working below the deck that I realized how dangerous it was as soon as we set sail. I think one of them recognized me, or thought he did." She'd remember his expression like it had been burned into her mind, a mixture of shock and fear. "So I jumped ship at one of the air temples."

There had been a guru there, but he'd mostly ignored her at first. She had learned meditation from him though, and the dreams came less and less frequently as a strange calm settled over her. Then, after a couple of months, he'd told her that her chi was blocked because she lacked the rage she used to channel her bending through. He'd told her about the legend of the Sun Warriors, of dragons. "I left the next morning."

It had taken her longer than she'd thought possible to find the Sun Warriors, "and then they had the nerve to tell me that they didn't think I was worthy to speak with the masters, so I threatened their lives." And that had been precisely the reason they hadn't allowed her to see the dragons, Zuko had realized. Because, when confronted with the power that came with renewed bending abilities, her first instinct had been to resort to threats of violence, to destruction, to the thing that had perverted the art of fire bending in the first place. He had to give it to the Sun Warriors, they'd probably saved his sister's life.

"I tried to fight them," she'd admitted. "It was foolish, but I thought that if I had my bending again, I could go back to the way I was, like the past three years never even happened. Like we never lost the war." And all the progress she'd made would have gone with it, Zuko was certain. "They tried not to use their bending against me at first, but I guess when it became clear that I wasn't leaving, the chief decided to do what needed to be done." She'd tugged her tunic down over her shoulder, and the red mark peaking up her neck from her collar, the mark that Zuko had assumed was a small rash, became a deep, angry burn that extended down her arm, down the left side of her chest.

"We match," she'd whispered, and Zuko had never heard her sound more like a child.

She'd stumbled onto the farm late the following evening, and the farmer and his wife had tended to her burn as best they could. The Fire Lord had been summoned the next day.

 

***

 

At first, Zuko wanted Azula to stay in the palace, but it became clear after a matter of days that the location wasn't conducive to her mental health. Mai found her, on the second day, curled up against the wall in front of a portrait of their father, the paint peeled off in long scratches, Azula's fingers covering in dried blood. She broke mirrors on almost a daily basis, before the old cuts on her knuckles had even had time to fully scab over. She'd told him, in a voice that was clearly meant to be reassuring, that it wasn't their mother she was seeing anymore; it was their father, but he couldn't feel comforted by that, because it seemed to him like however many steps she'd taken forward, she'd taken just as many back. Where she had seemed lucid and calm, if a little skittish, when he'd picked her up, she was now wildly unstable. Mai began to trail her, just like she used to, and she had been more patient than Zuko had ever thought possible. Things stopped breaking, and Azula stopped arriving at dinner with new minor injuries, but it was a short term fix and everyone knew it.

Zuko was just starting to come to terms with the fact that other arrangements would have to be made for his sister when Ty Lee turned up out of the blue and volunteered to take Azula with her.

"Kyoshi Island is great!" she'd enthused. "It's calm and isolated, and the war never really affected them much, so people won't be so eager to feed her to the Unagi as soon as she shows her face!" She'd said it with all the casualty as if she was discussing the particularly good cuisine, but Zuko had to admit, it was a major selling point, and not one he'd be able to find in many other areas. He paid for a larger house to accommodate the two of them, and Ty Lee set off with Azula in tow three days later.

 

***

 

Truth be told, Ty Lee told Zuko of her relationship with Azula months ago, and he and Mai had been speculating about what might be going on between the two of them for even longer, since they'd visited eight months after Azula's arrival for her eighteenth birthday to find that Suki was suddenly shooting Zuko furtive glances any time Azula and Ty Lee entered a room together.

"It's been going on for almost four months now," Ty Lee had confided three months later, and even though he thought he'd already known, he found his mouth hanging open. "It's hard for her. But then, everything is, especially things that involve other people. I don't know what to do."

"If Suki knows, you can count on everyone else knowing," Mai pointed out later, once he'd informed her. "Because you know she told Sokka."

"Why didn't Sokka tell _me_?" he asked through clenched teeth, because Sokka never could keep a secret. "He's my best friend." There was no doubt in Zuko's mind that, by now, he'd discussed it with Katara and Aang and Toph and the waiter at his local tea shop and whomever he bought his vegetables from.

Mai shrugged. "He probably wanted you to hear it from them."

 

***

 

"She tries, but she doesn't really know how to love," Ty Lee told him, near tears. "I just want her to be okay again."

"She was never okay," Zuko replied. "She's closer now than she's ever been."

Zuko knows that they meditate together every day, and Azula has told him that Ty Lee refuses to teach her to chi block, a decision that Zuko whole-heartedly supports.

"How am I even supposed to defend myself if I get attacked by a bender?" she asked him during one of his visits to Kyoshi Island. She and Ty Lee were sitting on opposite ends of the couch, because even though Ty Lee had already told him about the relationship, Azula still hadn't.

"The rest of us seem to manage just fine," Sokka answered, his arm wrapped around Suki, as she and Mai exchanged amused smirks.

"Do you love her?" Zuko asked after she'd told him.

"No," Ty Lee crossed her arms. "I came back to get her because I like having insults hurled at me."

They stayed like that for a moment, staring each other down, each to stubborn to break eye contact first, and then Ty Lee deflated. "I do. Otherwise, I wouldn't… maybe I would have before, but now that she's so fragile—" She broke off and Zuko suspected it had to do with the idea that _fragile_ was now a word that could be used to describe his sister, the fire bending prodigy, the master manipulator, the Fire Lord for an hour. His sister, the fallen princess. It settled like a weight in his stomach.

"Now that it's become obvious how afraid she is of never being loved," Zuko added, and Ty Lee nodded, her sad smile an indicator that they understood each other.

 

***

 

"You know people will talk," Zuko reminds her. Because, as her brother, and as the Fire Lord, he feels like it's his duty.

Azula laughs. It's not the laugh Zuko has become accustomed to. It's not sharp or cruel like the one he'd heard so often during the war, and it doesn't feel as empty as the old air temples, like the one he's heard since she returned. It's clear and ringing and only a little hollow. Not so cold that it give him shivers. It doesn't sound like music, the way a laugh is supposed to, but it doesn't sound like two pieces of steel being ground together either. It doesn't make him think of pain and death. "People already talk about me for worse reasons."

Zuko agrees. It makes no difference to him. He'd been so worried that Azula would never find anyone outside of their twisted little family who would be able to love her, let alone someone she'd be willing to let herself love in return, and now that she has, he's not about to be picky. Besides, Azula has been everyone's favorite topic of gossip since she returned. First it was how she'd lost her bending, then how she'd spent two years, her mental state, how she'd been sent away from the palace to a remote island in another nation, and she's handled it all… not exactly well, but she's handled it. He doesn't see why who she loves should be any different. Honestly, people will probably be more surprised that she loves anyone at all. "At least they'll be talking about you because of something that's making you happy."

He has some experience with this. The fact that it was taking him so long to wed Mai (and what they'd gotten up to anyway) had been quite the scandal until Azula turned up. People were even starting to speculate about whether the wedding would arrive before an heir. He knows the palace guards have a poll running.

"Small miracles." Azula sighs. "At least you're not threatening to set me up in an arranged marriage."

Zuko rolls his eyes. "Like anyone would agree to marry their son to you."

She shoots him a glare that's almost as cutting as the ones she used to fix him with before the Fire Nation fell. And then she shakes her head and her face is neutral again. "It's not that I _couldn't_ love a man," she chooses her words carefully. "I just never have. Not like that. Not one that I could _have_ anyway." She looks at him across her nose, and he busies himself with a clasp that's in danger of falling off his robe so he doesn't have to think about the implications of _that_ statement.

They've always understood each other. He is the only one who could ever understand her, and she's the only one who could ever almost understand him. And Azula still doesn't really know what love is. That is what he tells himself.

"Do you love _her_?" he asks, because the topic _needs_ to be redirected.

She rolls her eyes. "Oh, Zuzu, don't be such a sap. What does love have to do with anything?"

"That wasn't an answer," he points out. "It's a simple question, Azula."

"It's a simple answer, Zuko."

"Then say it."

Azula sighs. "She doesn't expect me to be weak, like any of the men who would have no doubt been chosen for me. But she doesn't expect me to be strong either, like Father. Or you."

"I never—"

"Oh, come on, Zuko, you know it's true." She makes a noise that he thinks is supposed to be a laugh. "Until I lost it, at least." She shakes her head and takes a long breath. "She doesn't even expect me to be _good_ like Mother or _sane_ like the doctors. She just expects me to be however I'm feeling, so I think… I think. Maybe."

It's as good as a yes, coming from Azula.

He nods. "Then that's all I want for you."

She mutters something and he think he catches the words, _fool_ and _disgusted_. "What was that?"

Azula looks up at him. "I was just wondering how you grew up in this place and still managed to become such a hopeless romantic."

"Simple," Zuko answers. "I spent three years travelling with our uncle."

"Well, it's disgraceful," she replies quickly. "You sound weak."

"And you sound ignorant. The only people who think love makes us weak are the people who have never experienced it."

"Now you really are channeling Uncle."

"I think," Zuko begins, laying a hand on her shoulder. He can feel her tense, see her brow scrunch momentarily, as she decides whether or not to pull away. Finally, she relaxes. "That Ty Lee would appreciate it if you abandoned that kind of thought."

Azula waves her hand dismissively. "Ty Lee knew what she was getting into."

"Still." He removes his hand. "Take it from someone who used to think the exact same way. I abandoned that belief, and look where it's gotten me." He straighten his hairpiece.

She narrows her eyes. "Why did you ask me when you already knew the answer?"

"How do you know I knew the answer?"

"Please, it was all over your face." She pauses, scowling. "I may have slipped, but I can still read you like a fire bending scroll."

"You wouldn't have waited so long to tell me if Ty Lee was just convenient," he replies. "I can read you too."

The smile falls from her face, and Zuko know immediately that he's slipped up, and that, despite her being foggy around the edges, Azula is still too sharp not to pick up on it. "How do you know how long I waited, Brother?"

He's done for and he knows it, but the last thing he's going to do is throw Ty Lee under the bus. "Someone else might have mentioned it," he mutters.

"You knew, and you let me stutter my way through telling you?" She looks furious. "Were you just trying to humiliate me?"

"I wanted to hear it from you."

"Why?"

"So I would know it was real."

"Who was it?" Azula demands. "Ty Lee?" Her eyes widen. " _Suki_."

Zuko shakes his head. "It doesn't matter who it was. I imagine everyone knows by now. You didn't expect me to be the last to find out."

"Never mind," his sister growls. "I'll just kill both of them."

"I heard that you're struggling," Zuko adds quickly, mostly to distract her, because he would really rather Ty Lee and Suki remain alive (though, without her bending, either one of them could probably take her down).

For a moment, she looks like she is going to scoff at him and deny it. The corners of her lips are pressed down in a defiant frown, but then she replies, "Of course I'm struggling. Some of us don't have a lot of experience with love."

Zuko frowns as well. "We grew up in the same house, Azula."

"But you had Uncle and Mother—"

"Mother loved you."

"But I didn't know that," she huffs.

"You had Ozai," Zuko points out. It's funny, because once upon a time, he'd believed he'd drawn the short stick. Once upon a time, he would have traded his mother's love, his Uncle's love, for Ozai's in a heartbeat. Now, it seems that his stick was longer than Azula's all along.

"Please," she snorts. "Father never loved me. I _thought_ he respected me." She sighs, long and withering. "But he played me the same way I played everyone else."

 

***

 

Zuko sees her watch Sokka and Suki when they're all together, sees her watch himself and Mai, like she's trying to figure out how exactly they make it work. He wishes he could watch her and Ty Lee, because if he saw their dynamic, he might be able to tell what exactly isn't lining up, but Azula is an intensely private person, and all that's really changed since the revelation that they are a couple is that they now sit next to each other on the couch when the others visit, and sometimes Ty Lee folds Azula's hand into her own.

"She has trouble around the other Kyoshi Warriors," Ty Lee tells him, and he reminds her that Azula has never done well when surrounded by other people her own age, especially when those people don't regard her as an authority figure.

"She wakes up screaming, but she won't tell me what she dreams about," Ty Lee tells him, and he's tempted to confide in her Azula's dreams about Ozai, but instead he tells her that Azula will tell her when she's ready, and in the meantime, all she needs to do is be there when Azula wakes up.

"She won't let me undress her," Ty Lee tells him, and he redirects her to Mai.

Azula never tells him much about what she is thinking unless she can frame it to make it look like someone else's fault, but he can see it written all over her. _Ty Lee doesn't understand_. If she ever said it out loud, he would remind her that Ty Lee is trying harder than Zuko thinks he's ever seen her try at anything in her life, and that it would probably help if Azula actually talked to her about it once in a while. Azula would laugh and probably poke fun at him and at the idea of heart-to-hearts in general, but he'd be able to see in her eyes that she was considering what he was saying. But Azula will never actually tell him that, so it's all moot.

 

***

 

Zuko and Mai finally marry when Azula is nineteen. It's a rather sudden and rushed affair (not that anyone outside the palace will ever know, of course) born mostly of the fact that no one wants to deal with the utter disaster that the Fire Lord's heir being born out of wedlock would no doubt cause. Zuko thinks that in another life, where he was a merchant or a fisherman and the whole world wasn't watching his every move, he and Mai would have been content to never marry at all, but, circumstances being what they are, he is surprised they needed this push. They have both always known that Zuko would have to marry, if only for propriety's sake, and it has been clear since he brought her back from her aunt's flower shop four years ago that Mai doesn't plan on going anywhere.

Azula and Ty Lee are set to attend, of course. Their relationship is just over a year old now, and, while it's easily the worst kept secret on Kyoshi Island, word doesn't seem to have reached the mainland yet.

This will mark Azula's first exposure to a large audience since their father crowned himself Phoenix King five years ago (Azula's own coronation later that day had taken place in front of an empty courtyard), and this poses its own problems. Zuko has been on the throne long enough now to have created his own legacy. He stopped facing assassination attempts at every turn about three and a half years ago, but the same cannot be said for Azula, especially not when they are expecting an influx of spectators from both the Earth Nation and the Water Tribes. One of the major advantages of Kyoshi Island is that travel there is still restricted.

Zuko mentions to Ty Lee that he thinks it would be better if Azula wore a dress to the ceremony and reception. They still have her old suit of armor in the palace, and she is entitled to wear it should she so choose, but her time spent with the military is so marred by destruction and genocide, and Zuko doesn't think anyone needs any reminding. Ty Lee tells him that Azula would really feel more comfortable in the armor. She hasn't worn a dress to an official function since she was about eight, and besides, a dress won't cover up the scar that she still doesn't like people to see. Ty Lee argues the Azula's comfort should be a higher priority than what people will say, and Zuko wants to point out that if comfort was really a higher priority than image, he and Mai wouldn't be getting married at all, but in Azula's case, it could mean running the risk of triggering an episode, and she's been doing so well, so Zuko concedes and the armor is shipped out to Kyoshi Island two months before the wedding so that Azula can arrive wearing it.

Azula doesn't wear a dress, but Ty Lee does. It's long and flowing and _pink, of course_. She'll probably be the only person at the ceremony not wearing red and black, including Mai (because Mai has never liked white, and it wouldn't exactly be appropriate, given the circumstances, anyway). They step off the ship arm-in-arm, and Zuko can only assume they intend to go public with the relationship.

"We thought it would be a welcome distraction to prevent people from speculating on whether or not your bridehas a baby bump," Azula tells him later, but he suspects it's an excuse. They haven't told Azula and Ty Lee about the pregnancy yet, and while he's not really surprised she's worked it out—she has always been able to read him like a fire bending scroll, after all—there is _no way_ she knew before she arrived.

She is right, though. It is a welcome distraction.

When he asks Ty Lee, she tells him it was Azula's idea, "I would never push her into something like that," so that they wouldn't have to spend the entire reception watching each other dance with other people. "This way, we'll actually get to have fun!" Zuko doubts very much that this was Azula's real reason either—Azula never danced with anyone she didn't want to dance with—but he understands her need to make it sound like the decision was made casually.

"It was only a matter of time, anyway," Azula explains with a wave of her hand. "People were going to start wondering why we still lived together and why we only ever leave the island on the same ship, even though we're both important enough to have our own."

Zuko can't help but revel in the gravity of it.

At the reception, Sokka gives Ty Lee a high five when Azula isn't looking. Zuko is unsure if he had foreknowledge of the plan. It will have depended on whether Ty Lee told Suki. Katara gives Ty Lee a hug and Azula an awkward handshake, during which it appears as if they're each trying to cut off the circulation to the other's fingers, a worried expression on her face all the while. Aang grins and hugs both of them at once, and, because it's Aang, he manages to make it not awkward at all.

"Do you think it'll last?" Toph comes up behind him as he's watching the pleasantries unfold.

"I wasn't sure," he answers. "Until today."

"I gotta admit," she replies. "I didn't see this one coming. Well, Sokka tells me there are lots of guys here without dates, so…" She gives him a rough punch in the arm that reminds him of the time they spent at the western air temple and on Ember Island during the war. "See ya later, Hot Shot."

He wonders if they all would have been so accepting if any of them had ever thought Azula would be capable of falling in love at all. Would _he_ have been able to accept it if she had been a little more normal? He'd like to think he would.

Later, Ty Lee makes a speech, and Azula almost looks like she might be considering making one too, until she doesn't, and then the dancing starts. Zuko and Mai take the floor first, as is customary (under Azulon and Ozai, weddings were one of the only functions at which dancing had been deemed appropriate), but they step aside as soon as enough couples have joined them that they're not the focus of attention anymore. Aang and Katara are one of the first to step in, to no one's surprise. They have always been one of those sickeningly sweet couples, the kind Mai and Zuko used to laugh at, back when they both hated the world. Sokka and Suki join not long after, but neither of them are particularly good dancers, and they step on each other's feet so much that they look more like they're trying to walk on hot coals. Sokka is also swaying them back and forth enthusiastically enough to be conspicuous, and the other couples are giving them a wide birth, but they seem to be having a good time, nonetheless. And then Toph emerges from the crowd, grinning wickedly and pulling behind her a nervous-looking boy who Zuko thinks is either the son of an Earth Kingdom noble back in Ba Sing Se or one of Mai's distant cousins, and then Mai's mother (who has long since been cleared of any involvement in her husband's wrong-doings) and the seven year old boy who, Zuko realizes with a jolt, is Tom-Tom step in as well, and soon the floor is filled with slowly revolving couples while a few stragglers linger around the outskirts of the room.

Mai nudges him in the ribs, and before he can complain about the inevitable bruise that it will leave, she nods toward the far corner, where Ty Lee is putting her entire body into pulling an extremely reluctant Azula onto the dance floor. To Zuko's immense surprise, she finally concedes with a roll of her eyes (maybe, after all these years, she's finally learned to recognize a lost battle when she's confronted with one) and allows herself to be practically dragged across the room into the mass of people. It's more people than his sister has been in close proximity to in years, Zuko is certain. Maybe since the last gala their father held. She scowls and groans and tries her hardest to look bored so that everyone around them will know that the dancing was not her idea, because she's not nearly naïve enough or romantic enough or human enough for something like that, but she relaxes into the embrace and curls her fingers into the back of Ty Lee's dress and when Ty Lee presses her face into the side of Azula's neck and whispers something that looks suspiciously like _I love you_ into her skin, Zuko thinks she might be in danger of melting. Ty Lee sways them back and forth in time with the music but Azula barely seems to notice. Azula seems content just to _hold_. She buries her face in the other girl's shoulder, and he can see her inhale, shutter, exhale. He doesn't know what is going through his sister's mind, but he feels like they are all intruding on something intensely private. And then she lifts her head again and, though her cheeks are dry, her eyes glisten.

And when she kisses Ty Lee right there in the middle of the dance floor, she almost looks _happy_.

**Author's Note:**

> So this is a bit of a departure from my regular fandoms (and my regular style of writing), but the idea was bouncing around in my head, and I had to write it down. I initially intended for it to be a quick oneshot, like two thousand words max, and then things kind of got out of hand. I'm exploring the idea of doing some more writing for this fandom, so we'll see what happens.


End file.
